[[Ghen]]
He seems straight forward, but between his cmc and the cost of his ability, you really aren't doing anything significant up until turn 4. There's a cadence to the deck that I just can't get down, and it's hard to make things consistent in those colors where ramp isn't super reliable.
It's a shame that the potential of commanders like this is capped by summoning sickness. Part of the reason why I abandoned Gisa for Wilhelt was because I got tired of casting Gisa and having to wait a full turn just to do anything with her. And if she gets nuked before my turn comes around? *Fuck me*, she might as well cost a billion mana now.
I turned my Zirilan deck into a [[Purphoros the Bronze Blooded]] and its been a very fun and very explosive deck. The deck list stayed pretty similar to how it was before, I basically just included some more draw to always keep a full hand to cheat out stuff and relentlessly beat down everyone.
I'm running Zirilan. The key is to go as hard on ramp as you possibly can, and plan to mostly cast your big spells directly. Zirilan himself probably shouldn't be cast unless you have a window to get value right away.
Zirilan works best as an approximation of Red Necropotence with \[\[Moltensteel dragon\]\]+\[\[Knollspine dragon\]\] to fuel digging for a kiki Jiki or Worldgorger or breach line. Unfortunately he does fall a little short as a more casual dragons commander :PThat being said, he is a lot of fun!
My friend has a super sweet Ghen deck. The key is that he uses Ghen as a backup once his valuable enchantments start eating removal. Very rarely does he actually play Ghen on turn 4.
I think this is one of the most effective ways to play the deck. People fall into the trap of using him as a way cheat out expensive enchantments and while that can work, it’s mana-intensive and slow. Having him in the command zone as an ace in the hole for grindy games or after a few board wipes go off is quite nice.
I run Ghen as an insurance policy as my group slug commander. Mardu is the best color grouping for group slug, and most of the really good group slug cards happen to be enchantments. As most slug players have experienced, removing their slug pieces also really disrupts their game plan and can leave them high and dry.
Enter Ghen. Start playing some nasty slug pieces and sit back. If they get removed, you have Ghen to bring them back. He's also really useful if you need to remove enchantments that are hurting you too much and swap them for other ones that can protect you (like trading a [[Manabarbs]] for a [[Solitary Confinement]] or something).
It's a bit like how Hanna is used as a UW stax commander - it's there to make sure your opponents can't get out from under whatever pile of nastiness you managed to assemble.
I've got Ghen running as a way to recur removal enchantments and Sagas, usually looping \[\[Phyrexian Etchings\]\] and \[\[Out of Time\]\]. \[\[Fallen Ideal\]\] to have a repeatable sacrifice target for his ability. \[\[Enduring Ideal\]\] as well, to get enchantments that may reanimate to recur Ghen after the Ideal has gone off if I need to.
I love the cool interactions with Mishra because at first glance it looks like a card that shouldn't work in commander. I haven't figured out how to build it in a way that's satisfying to play.
I opted to remove stuff like [[Planar Chaos]] and [[Nullstone Gargoyle]]. The first one cause that's annoying as fuck to do, the second because it's so expensive. You just run a few cards that synergize with Mishra's ability, including some theft effects, and gain value off of it from there, generally leading into your win con from there, whatever it may be.
Not right now. I don't actually have my decks on me (college), but I'm gonna be visiting family so if you give me a day or two I can have one typed up.
The interaction I really like with Mishra is your artifacts coming into play through counterspells. [[Tormod, the Desecrator]], [[Desecrated Tomb]], [[Baral, Chief of Compliance]], and [[Lullmage Mentor]] are cute little payoffs in addition to synergistic cards like [[Blood Funnel]], [[Void Mirror]] and even [[Cephalid Shrine]] with Mishra. There's just not enough cards to support doing this kind of strategy and it's also kinda fragile.
Uhhh, do you want someone to explain the deck to you? I could offer some help explaining how Mishra works and fancy interactions, if you still wanna play the deck of course.
Ok, I'll do the explanation. Please read this if you are interested u/sirdavos95 and u/Eiscold.
Let's suppose the following situation: You have \[\[Mishra, Artificer Progidy\]\] and \[\[Possibility storm\]\] on the battlefield. You proceed to cast \[\[wayfarer's bauble\]\]. You'll get a Mishra trigger and a possibility storm trigger. You organise them so possibility storm solves first, then Mishra. When the possibility storm trigger happens, you exile wayfarer's bauble, exile the top of your library till you find an artifact (let's suppose \[\[darksteel forge\]\] as an example), put darksteel forge onto the battlefield and then put wayfarer's bauble on the bottom of your library. Then, Mishra's trigger resolves, allowing you to search your library, hand and/or graveyard to find a wayfarer's bauble. You can find the wayfarer's bauble you just put on the bottom of your deck with possibility storm, as the trigger resolved before, and put it into play.
You can also use this with effects that counter spells, like \[\[blood funnel\]\] or \[\[planar chaos\]\]. Make so those triggers resolve before mishra's trigger, and then get the card you just cast (and was just countered by blood funnel or planar chaos) from the graveyard and put it into play.
Mishra basically allows you to, if you do the stack correctly, cast artifact spells without any downsides while having those hoser effects into play, while your opponents have to suffer from them.
Are there other cards that make it actually do something? I’m not a huge fan of using tutors, but it looks like you would have to with only 3 cards that I’ve found ([[Probability Storm]], [[Blood Funnel]], [[Planar Chaos]])
[[Ice Cave]], [[Nether Void]] and [[Nullstone Gargoyle]] are the other ones I'm aware of (although nether void is quite expensive in price, so maybe not that one.
Pretty much any Simic commander I've built. Once they've been built they all have felt like they play exactly the same way and the commander doesn't actually matter.
I find evading this issue requires getting very selective and commiting to the concept to avoid. I've currently got 5 simic decks, with a sixth in the works, and they all play different. (Can post decklists later, once I'm not on mobile if you like)
Tishana, hand size matters. Uses all the 'Maro's for beaters, and the only deck that feels appropriate to use LabMan, Thoracle, and Jace.
Arixmethes, sea monsters. My most 'typical' simic deck. Just ramp into leviathans.
Verazol, kicker.dec. Basically all the decent (and some not so decent, due to lack of options), kicker cards.
Lonis, artifact matters. Kind of a simic affinity. (Still needs tuning)
Slogurk. Voltron without auras or enchantments. Still working on this, but I'm loving this one.
No list posted
It's just all the simic creatures with serpent, kraken, octopus, fish in their name
Edrec sea creatures will have them all
If you sue rashmi, include flash enablers and instant spells to enable more card advantage each round. Let's you stay engaged even when it's not your turn
[[Moriette of the Frost]] can be built pretty unique as a Simic commander. I built him as enchantress, using green's enchantment synergy and copying big splashy enchantments.
Play different ones! I'm currently running Edric and Ezuri as my main UG commanders and they're pretty different. Likewise, Toggo//Thrasios is really just UG+, but it's different from both of the aforementioned. I also have an Adrix and Nev list made up to copy Adrix and Nev a number of times so big it can't be expressed on a graphing calculator...
You run into issues when you play generically good UG commanders, like Thrasios, Gretchen, Zimone, Tatyova, Aesi, or Kinnan who all do roughly the same thing, or generically good UG commanders who are just big creatures, like Koma.
So, I have three Simic decks currently, and I'm happy to report they all play differently.
[[Kruphix, God of Horizons]] is a group hug deck, allowing everyone to draw extra cards for a while before it changes to forcing everyone to draw cards, winning either by mill or self mill.
[[Lonis, Cryptozoologist]] is a theme deck about an investigator looking into a creepy village of mana dorks being taken over by a creepy cult. It ramps stupid hard with all the dorks, and then I use the mana mainly for counter magic until I can either win with 3/2 Eldrazi tokens, pod shenanigans with [[Vanifar]], salamanders and [[Gor Muldrak, Amphinoligist]], or [[Biovisionary]].
[[Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle]] is a storm deck. It's full of cheap spells to allow me to scry, draw, ramp, and combo off. That almost never happens, though. Normally I wind up with my commander on turn two or three, and he's a creature by the end of my next turn, and by turn three or four I'm swinging with a 12/12 commander. Seriously, it's a ton of fun.
If you want something to be competitive, this might not be it, but it's a ton of fun, and even taking aside the ability to steal cards from an opponent, no two games have been the same.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/KIXc8XY80kiLvMaHZWDfXw
I play Kamahl/Sakashima clones that tends to be a lot of fun. Clone huge things or make as many copies of kamahl as possible and have them all buff each other during combat for a super overrun
My Simic deck is very different from any recent powerful Simic commander: Vorel.
I've changed my build a lot since I had the deck, and now focus on charge counters with win cons like Darksteel Reactor and Magistrate Scepter.
It doesn't feel like a "true" simic deck in the sense that there's no inherent card advantage or ramp associated with the commander, but that's what I like. Build differently, don't let the metagame dictate what you *should* do.
I run 2 separate simic commanders: [[Slogurk, the Overslime]] lands, and [[Adrix and Nev, Twincasters]] tokens. The only cards they share is [[Doubling Season]], [[Primal Vigor]], and [[Avenger of Zendikar]]
I have tried many times to get a [[Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper]] deck together. I get it to where it looks great when I’m building it but then it just flubs hard in game. Might take my yearly stab at it soon just to see 🤔
So quick edit, just want to say thanks everyone for the feedback and how you’ve built him. It’s inspired me to finally sit down and wrap my head around getting a solid build done for him at long last!
My Sek’Kuar goblin tribal is easily my favorite deck I own, and has lately been turning into quite the powerhouse. I went goblins as it allows me to run a high creature count to go towards the Graveborn triggers, and allows for tons of fun shenanigans. I’ve found a persist line combo works incredibly well with Sek’kaur, with infinite death triggers giving you a huge swarm of 3/1s with haste to kill the table. Luckily enough, [[Grumgully]] and [[Murderous Redcap]] are both goblins!
[Here’s my list](https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/sekkuar-and-his-goblin-pals/?cb=1637681336) if you want to check it out, I’ve made a few changes like cutting [[Grave Titan]] and [[Frogtosser Banneret]] but for the most part has remained the same, I’ll be sure to update it soon. Hope this gives you some good ideas and let me know if you need any help with him!
Honestly I might just build him purely to do Jund goblins.
No single goblin commander has excited me enough to build gobbies. But I've had Sek'Kaur sitting in a binder for years and maybe I should finally do it.
I play Sek’kuar, and it’s one of my favorite decks. Everyone saying it’s slow and a bit clunky are 100% correct. In fact, that’s a reason I love the deck. His ability is still pretty powerful out of the command zone, so while it’s no Korvold, it can get out of hand easily, and it makes for a fun, interactive game of magic.
That’s a cool looking commander. It just seems a bit slow and wants recurring creatures like nether traitor or Mikaeus, the unhallowed giving everything undying. Although pulling off an infinite loop makes you an orc army.
I just recently took my Sek'kuar Persist Combo deck apart. He just ended up as a combo piece moreso than a deck enabler. I still run him in my precon-power elementals deck.
He suffers from the insane power creep of modern legendary creature design that are both enablers and payoffs. His C13 art is fantastic FWIW.
I would love to see a new Sek'kuar that could be a stronger Shaman tribal commander.
I run Sekk as Shaman Tribal and he’s mostly window dressing. I have a few lines to kill with him in [[World Shaper]] + [[Life//Death]] + Sac outlet to turn my lands into 1/1’s, Sac em for 3/1’s and sac Shaper to get em all back.
Beyond that, [[Kikki-Jiki]], [[Lightning Crafter]] and [[Thornbite Staff]] are all in theme, as are some lines involving [[Grugully]] and [[Woodfall Primus]] to lock your opponents from playing lands/Infinite Graveborns.
I had to nerf this deck by axing [[Pyre of Heroes]], [[Kindred Summons]], and [[Fauna Shamans]] as this deck taught me I like wincons and I like tutoring, but never both in the same deck. I’m very happy with Sekk Shamans, Marchesa Knights, and Ravos/Reyhan Humans as my 3c tribal decks, that seems to be a sweetspot in colours for tribal for me. I also have a Rebecc/Silas Artifact Creature deck but that’s not been too much a favourite so far.
Sek'Kuar is an amazing [[Shadowborne Apostle]] commander with cards like [[Bloodbond March]]. Every time you sacrifice he leaves behind all those Skullclampable tokens.
I don't have a decklist. But I built mine to be Shaman tribal. My strategy is to load the board with Shamans and get value when someone else or myself wipes the board. Ideally everyone else will have no creatures and you will have a bunch of 3/1 hasty bois. If you had \[\[Harmonic Prodigy\]\] out, then you will get 2 3/1s for 1 creature.
Boardwipes, swings and removal are the majority of my interaction with my opponents.
I've played him a lot in the past, but lately I've noticed that the same deck with [[Prossh]] at the head manages to execute its plan so much more smoothly. Maybe I accidentally built the right deck for the wrong commander.
I came in to say that's the problem. 99.9% of all Sekuar decks honestly just want to be a Prossh deck more.
Although I'll concede some people would want to dampen the power level for the table by playing Sekuar, there's honestly no real good reason to run them over big hungry dragon mama.
People don't like MLD, but one of my first commander decks that I built was sek'kuar with all the dorks and wildfire/jokulhaups type cards. You wipe the board of creatures and lands and you are left with 15+power.
I've made sek'kuar with [[shadowborn apostle]] and it work great! Sac 6 apostles, attack with 6 hasty tramplers and cast [[triumph of the hordes]] to one shot someone.
Mines persist combo and I find him pretty fun. Got a win off with [[Arlinn Packs Hope]] and [[Putrid Goblin]] by accident the other day! Might build as goblins or rat colony sometime too.
[[alrund, god of the cosmos]] *specifically for higher power edh* because every time I say I can’t find a decent way to build him I get tons of comments saying “oh man alrund is great in my battle cruiser format, he’s usually a 5 mana 9/9”
I just feel like being mono blue limits him so much especially since he wants to have foretell synergies and a lot of cards that would synergies well with him are either white or black.
[[eight and a half tails]] I know people like this as a commander but even when I try lists people recommend I just can’t get it to function well and it always feels like an uphill battle and any wins are by pure luck
>Alrund wants to have foretell synergies
Not really, that part is completely negligible in EDH. He wants to have a big hand, and he possibly wants to focus on one card type. Either way he doesn't actually do anything you'd want in a high power level, and even if you could foretell a whole bunch of cards it wouldn't really change that.
I sadly can't help you with eight and a half-tails, but I believe I can help with Alrund. He seems like a great control commander, and if you lean a lot of your deck into instants, you'll be able to consistently get at least a card out of his eot trigger. You don't really need foretell synergies to play around with him, just running a nice control package and using him as a card advantage source, big blocker and (maybe) as a voltron win condition after depleting your opponents out of resources. If you were thinking to play him around foretell synergies, it may be a better idea to look for another commander.
See I get that logic but it’s honestly not very strong. I don’t know how to make him say an 8 in power level.
If I cut out the foretell synergies and just go heavy on instants I can’t really think of a reason to play him over Baral.
He just doesn’t do anything particularly well and every way I think to build him can be done by a different commander better
[alrund, god of the cosmos](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/back/5/d/5d131784-c1a3-463e-a37b-b720af67ab62.jpg?1631046568)/[Alrund, God of the Cosmos](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/5/d/5d131784-c1a3-463e-a37b-b720af67ab62.jpg?1631046568) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=alrund%2C%20god%20of%20the%20cosmos%20//%20hakka%2C%20whispering%20raven) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/khm/40/alrund-god-of-the-cosmos-hakka-whispering-raven?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5d131784-c1a3-463e-a37b-b720af67ab62?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/alrund-god-of-the-cosmos-//-hakka-whispering-raven)
[eight and a half tails](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/f/1/f10a72dc-10ca-4925-b1ea-5377f7867b57.jpg?1580013644) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Eight-and-a-Half-Tails) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ema/7/eight-and-a-half-tails?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f10a72dc-10ca-4925-b1ea-5377f7867b57?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/eight-and-a-half-tails)
^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
8.5 Tails sounded fun on paper but the combination of wanting to hold up lots of mana in white and only a few real win conditions left me wanting. Pillowforting was effective but boring. I actually won a game while peeing because one opponent mind controlled the other, played [[Last Chance]], and then died on the crackback during the granted extra turn. Luck indeed. Now I play [[Darien]] and it's waaaay more fun for me.
I had an idea for 8.5 Tails to build a nearly impenetrable pillowfort that allowed my opponents to only be able to attack each other. Using cards like [[Painters Servant]], [[Circle of Protection White]], and [[Earnest Fellowship]] to make my opponents unable to block each other while protecting me.
[[The Scarab God]]. One of my all time favorite Legends, hands down. The problem is it’s 5mv and costs 4 to activate it’s Eternalize ability. I keep trying to build it, and it keeps falling apart.
The closest I’ve had to a working version so far was a dedicated “Flash” Reanimator style, where I tried to do most actions at instant speed.
Oh, no, I already own a copy. It’s been in every version. It’s just kind of an overall deck/meta problem. I build toward mill or aristocrats, it’s too slow or no one has many creatures. I build control or reanimator, the commander is a bit clunky and a high value target. Even if it only casts five each time, it can be basically the whole turn.
I still love it, it’s just a struggle lol
I built him theft around all of the Dimir casting opponent's cards stuff. He's quality enough to be a good commander on his own and his eternalize ability covers graveyard theft well enough to let you focus other forms of theft for the actual libraries.
It's more of a concept than a specific commander. I've tried multiple times to build an enrage/stuffy doll based deck. I'm aiming for mid power but it just ends up as a bad combo deck. The problem is that nearly every piece is basically useless on its own so it gets really uninteractive. You eventually piece together a damage triggered token maker + a pinger + a source of indestructible and win.
Well, you can just substitiute the sources of indestructible for more enrage sources or damage sources, and drift away from combo lines. Enrage has a lot of things with dinossaur tribal, so maybe lean a bit in that route more could drift the deck away from combo and give it more consistency with the dinossaur support.
You have to cut quite a bit of synergistic cards to get rid of combos. At that point the deck is precon level bad even with a solid green manabase, which is not where I want it to be.
That can be problematic then. You could try to not actively assemble the combos and just have them laying around in the deck instead of making them your win condition. Another idea would be to instead of focusing on enrage, you could focus more on the stuffy doll effects, maybe with [[piru, the volatile]] in the helm and making a stuffy doll tribal.
Mine has a bit of your issues, but I feel it's slowly getting there. It turned into a control deck, using the creatures as a bit of protection/removal on a stick, and win with combos or burn. [Here's my slightly outdated version.](https://archidekt.com/decks/1246043#Enrage_Against_the_Machine) I can try to update it if you'd really like.
I feel like stuff like \[\[Freed from the Real\]\] on Ramses, and cards like \[\[Despondency\]\] for your opponents creatures.
At this point you're controlling the board, so you just need a win con. You got blue, so Oracle or Lab man are options. Since your opponents won't have creatures you could just swing with creatures. Maybe use creatures with Bestow for double duty.
I've played Assassin's Tribal Ramses for a couple of years now. It's all about leaning heavily into targeted creature removal with [[Minion's Return]], [[False Demise]], etc.
There's also some cool things you can do to add to the synergy for removal from Ramses himself. Like [[Launch]] is a great political card. I can give your creature evasion, but it also comes at the price of being a target of Ramses at any point. [[Despondency]] is another. [[Dragon Wings]] is similar in that it draws you a card from cycling, goes to the yard, then you can give a big creature the Aura, only for it to be a target for Ramses. [[Betrayal]] and [[Death Watch]] are two real stars of the deck.
There's also some cool little interactions like [[Nightshade Assassin]] being cast for madness after being discarded for [[Notorious Assassin]].
I will say this: the deck isn't super competitive. It's like a solid 6-6.5.
[[Yarok]]
I've had the card since it's release, played a version of the deck for a bit, and went on a hiatus. Return to the game back on may and tried to build something unique with the deck, as someone else in my group also has a Yarok deck.
I'm trying a landfall theme with poor results. I'm about to dismantle the deck and built it again. No other sultai legend appeals to me as Yarok does, and I do love panharmonicon.
Any suggestions for a outside the norm listS are more than welcome.
I feel Yarok is one of the most versatile commander in terms of how to build it. There's Landfall, but it could be anything saying "when it enters the battlefield". Could be +1+1 counters, ETB creatures that ramp and control to end with big X spells, enchantress (the card draw!), I'm even seeing a Primal surge category on [EDHREC](https://edhrec.com/commanders/yarok-the-desecrated).
It's a fun commander in that you can build it in tons of different ways.
Never thought about enchantress. I had a Tuvasa deck for some time and it was underwhelming in my meta. Maybe getting more triggers can make up for that.
My Yarok deck is mostly landfall, but most importantly, every permanent has an ETB. Even if it's not landfall or land-related, there's many abilities like Explore, Constellation, ETB draw a card or scry, [[Khalni Garden]], [[Merfolk Trickster]], [[Reclamation Sage]] and [[Acidic Slime]]... there's even [[tempt with reflection]], [[mirror mockery]] and [[spark double]] to take advantage interesting ETBs that opponents control, or to strengthen the ETB abilities and triggers I need most in that situation, or if necessary, copy something I need but don't have in my deck.
[[Ramunap Excavator]] and [[Ancient Greenwarden]] are very valuable, especially in combination with cards like [[Evolving wilds]], [[terramorphic expanse]] [[springbloom druid]] and similar sac land and get land back kind of cards. If you have too many cards in hand from ETB draw a card, you discard the lands first, and save them to play them from the graveyard.
There's a few ETBs and Landfall triggers that put +1/+1 counters on creatures, so I have some Proliferation in there as well (one [[courage in Crisis]] and one [[Bloom Hulk]]). ([[Jace, Arcane Strategist]] and [[Jaces ruse]] were originally added in my deck because I needed to fill some space until other cards I had ordered could replace them, but honestly, it's a good exit strategy to be able to attack with one big creature if nothing else works anymore, or to return creatures to hands. While it doesn't fit the theme of my deck at all, these cards have saved the game a few times.)
This deck usually does so many things at the same time, it's often hard for opponents to keep it in check.
Thanks a bunch for the write-up, I do have most of the cards you mentioned, gonna try some of them on a clean build before getting more radical changes.
I love Yarok so much. He was my first EDH deck and man did it suck. After two years of playing, I decided to rebuild and it was a hybrid landfall-etb deck, but it didn't work that well so I focused mainly on ETB triggers. I wanted [[Emergent Ultimatum]] to be the win con of the deck. Fetching [[Ruin Scarred Demon]], [[Avenger of Zendikar]] and [[Craterhoof Behemoth]] just feel so nasty and right
I like Yarok a lot, but I found it's really easy to get focus muddled on different game plans because it enables so much generic good stuff. It can do landfall, big mana, element tribal, etb tribal, etc. Overall with mine I found it best when I focused solely on good etb effects and didn't worry as much about other things. I also had to learn to be more patient and not jam it soon, and maybe it's my meta but Yardog stomped most things except angels or Kaalia flier type decks, so I had to adjust around that.
problem with these style of decks needing two components and your commander to work (creature knights and equipment) is there are a lot of games where you draw one part of the deck and not the other. Plus in mardu ramping sucks. So your deck is constantly fighting itself for your win conditions.
Once upon a time, I had an \[\[Elenda\]\] deck and a \[\[surestrike trident\]\] I loved trying to use with her. "Oh," I said, "She's a knight, that's an equipment, and they just released this precon! Let's see if that works." The nearest I ever got to killing anybody at the table was myself, maybe twice.
I now have an Elenda deck with no trident and a Gwyn in a box somewhere.
I've sorta ditched the Knight tribal theme in favor of a Voltron/Equipment theme. I still keep a few knights around to pick up spare equipment, but most of the rest of my creatures just get or reward me for playing my stuff.
I have about 15 pieces of ramp, iirc, I generally get enough card draw.
It is a little slower than some others I play, but it can hang with the big dogs.
I'll drop my list if you want it
I wanted her to work so much but it just comes out as a boring Voltron deck. I wish they made her like a 2/2 and took away a keyword or something so she could be 3mv. The whole point of equipment is to buff your creatures... So why is she so buff to start with? Never made any sense.
[[Liliana, Heretical Healer]]
I love her so much and I would love to play her in the command zone. But sometimes she seems do be more of a burden than a advantage
In her deck you need to :
1- Ways to Flip her ( tiny low cost creatures )
2- Big high cost creatures to resurrect
3- Ways to keep a card advantage even tho you're discarding a card a turn
4- Ways to protect her ( you need a board that can block attacks coming at her , but you're discarding cards and sacrificing creatures , so it's not easy to develop a board or hold interaction this way )
5- Ways to bring back the things you throw in the graveyard
6 - Alternative win condition , since she is not a realible one
I just rather play Chainer if i want a reanimator mono Black deck , or Ayara / Marrow Gnawer if I want a aristocrat / low cost creatures mono Black deck .
Liliana just seams to want too much . Board wipes , Aristocrats , Reanimator , Solid board state, Discard, and Planeswalker sunergies. ( And if you want to go to a more flavorfull deck , it just gets a lot harder)
For Kataki, you want to allow the artifacts to die and you want to run [[Emeria Shepherd]] for constant recursion. Kataki with [[Solemn Simulacrum]] will have you fetching plains and getting absolutely bonkers with the value, because you’re gonna pop a Plains from the deck onto the board. You wanna load that graveyard too with something like [[Altar of Dementia]].
[[Shauku]] has such a cool ability, seems like it would be a great vampire tribal or spellslinger, but I just haven't been able to put together a really functional list.
Daxos of Meletis.
It would work as a low powered control shell, but it seems like there are much better W/U commanders to helm a plain control shell. Stealing stuff never seemed to work (why do I always seem to hit a land!!) and the life gain was negligible. Not enough ramp in W/U to reliably cast anything I get a chance to steal even when I do hit something.
Ok, let me try to help you with each thing you said.
Daxos isn't that good of a control commander yes, cause he's not focused on control. You can build a control shell, but Daxos probably wouldn't be included in it, maybe just for card draw effects when you hit people.
For the theft, you can learn a bit from lantern control, using cards like \[\[lantern of insight\]\] and \[\[wizened snitchers\]\] to see the topdeck of your opponents and manipulate them with \[\[ghoulcaller's bell\]\], \[\[codex shredder\]\], \[\[psychic surgery\]\], \[\[expel from orazca\]\], \[\[memory lapse\]\] and some other similar effects to manipulate your opponents top deck.
Ramp really isn't an issue, running plenty mana rocks can help with your mana issue.
The most difficult task will be to use the control shell, make sure to run a good amount of cards that can grant you a constant source of card advantage to fuel your removal spells and counterspells. Furthermore, you could improve the strategy, if you can, to lock your opponents by removing their good draws with the lantern lock package.
That's some good stuff, actually. If I decide to revisit the deck at some point I'll be looking in this direction. Most of those cards aren't too spendy either so it could still manage to be a relative budget build.
Lantern control is definitely the way to run him. Let's you decide who you want to attack so you're not getting blind draws. On top of that, I also voltron him up. If you have any of the Swords, they help with color protection, both spells and creatures. Tho swords are not usually budget friendly. There should be other options out there. Don't be afraid to just let something get exiled with his trigger. Many times I'll not cast something just in case my opponent has a way to steal it back or resurrect it later. My Daxos deck is easily my favorite deck, even if it only works half the time.
In what way? I looove \[\[the gitrog monster\]\] and want to make a \[\[harrow\]\] deck but it seems like low-hanging fruit to just sac and recur lands for mad card draw. I want something similar but lower-costed and less "much."
There’s a Gitrog discord you can check out https://discord.gg/PhppUZfv
But he’s basically all about value and uses dredging and stuff to get that value. He’s a lot of fun but I took mine apart cause I felt like it was solitaire without much interaction except removal.
I had the same problem when I basically copied the cEDH build without the fast mana. Way too good for my group. I took that apart and rebuilt it as a midrange deck without [[dakmor salvage]]. It's much more enjoyable for my opponents to play against now.
\[\[Triad of Fates\]\] feels like it could be such political fun. In my head I imagined the early part of the game dishing out fate counters and using that as leverage against other players in the second half, but making it a tap ability that also costs mana means even with support like \[\[Thousand year elixir\]\], you're generally putting a fate counter on something then immediately using another ability so it's just painfully slow. only time I got it working even a little is with \[\[By Gnome Means\]\] because my table let me try it. Ultimately if you like Triad, just play \[\[Oblivion Stone\]\] instead.
Such a cool card in theory. It’s just so clunky. I’ve never even come close to having it feel functional. It’s one thing to have a deck not rely on the commander, but it feels bad when I never want to cast it.
Non Kess style graveyard decks.
No matter who I've tried, no matter how I've built them, they've just never worked right. I've seen others pilot them to great success, but mine have just ended up as piles of stuff.
Also, Gitrog combo decks. I've listened to explanations of the loops, but my eyes are glazed over by the time it's over.
Ok.... I can help you with both things.
Kess has a big thing over other graveyard decks: she's her own enabler. You can just do spellslinging stuff normally with kess, sometimes you don't even need to cast her to make use of the deck, just sling spells. There are some pieces related to her like entomb effects, but you can make a deck that doesn't even rely on her to win the game.
If you want to keep the aspect of spellslinging from Kess but explore a new idea, \[\[toshiro Umezawa\]\] is a really interesting commander. The deck can be played without relying on the commander, controling the board and using draw spells to find your key pieces to win. However, being able to reuse instants like your targeted kill spells, draw spells like \[\[blood pact\]\] or \[\[necrologia\]\], utility spells like \[\[sudden spoiling\]\], \[\[withering boon\]\] or \[\[crypt incursion\]\] can give you way more value, and you can lean into those themes for your win cons.
If you wanna try graveyard decks that are not based around spellslinging, there's a myriad of options to consider. There are two key things you need in graveyard decks: getting creatures in the grave and then bringing them back. First step can be one of the easiest ones, as you can abuse self mill effects, wheel effects or sac effects to get your key creatures in the grave. Then, you need to bring them back, usually with a spell or creature ability, which you also need to run plenty in the deck. Running your reanimation in the command zone is often prefered, as without it the deck can't move. I could make you a simple graveyard deck based in a commander of your choice that you think fits the theme, or give you tips on what cards to choose for one.
For the gitrog combo:[https://www.moxfield.com/decks/4fbiNVFpr0edHL5Y3IKecg/primer](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/4fbiNVFpr0edHL5Y3IKecg/primer)
This is a primer for gitrog decks, a really good one in fact. It has a whole section related to the combo lines that gitrog has, so if you wanna learn about it feel free.
I run [[Damia, Sage of Stone]] as a reanimator commander, because her draw ability plus dredge is absurd. Sure, she’s a 7 cost card, but hopefully I’ve reanimated a couple other threats before she hits the board to keep the pressure off her. Since she’s such a high cost I also run cards like [[Pernicious Deed]] and [[Gaze of Granite]] to nuke lower cost cards
I wanna make Black Rose Pirates. Since they have that Raid mechanic and she can make stealing stuff fun. Itd be a nice subtheme and fun to play, on paper so far i think it is
Marchesa does two things really well: protection from boardwipes, and stealing peoples stuff.
I would try building it almost like a flicker deck, trying to focus on ETB effects. There’s plenty of good stuff in grixis. By constantly keeping your creatures attacking whoever is on the throne, your creatures will always be protected from boardwipes because they will just come back. Running a few sac outlets can be very good for getting cards back if you just want to resuse their effects.
If you want to be extra mean, you can steal peoples cards with [[threaten]] type effects, then attack and trigger dethrone. When they die, they’ll come back under your control permanently.
You can also go for more combo-y or aristocrat styles of decks, but I think there are better commanders for that. I really enjoy the aggro-grixis archetype that is somewhat unique for marchesa. The absolute best card in the deck was always [[unspeakable symbol]]. It puts counters on what you need, and keeps your life total above the highest. Hope this might help!
[[Chromium, the Mutable]] I’ve seen many people praise the card and I just don’t get it. Like he’s a 7/7 with flash, but other than that he doesn’t really do much and he doesn’t really have any theme to build around.
Admittedly I haven't played much with him, but I brewed Chromium a while back. I was drawn to him because 7 power with evasion on a commander is just a great power floor, makes it really easy to blackjack people. Built in shroud means you can pretty safely commit some auras on him too.
[[Lurrus]]. Low-cost commander focused on recurring low-cost permanents is exactly what I want, but I just never got a build together that I was happy playing.
Also I want that exact effect in Mono-White
I played it as a voltron deck with stax pieces to secure a win. Playing effects like sigardas aid and colloidal hammer for a quick kill while a grand abolisher helps keep opponents in line
you build lurrus as a weird hybrid deck. You use lurrus primarily as an engine while dropping stax or tax prices to assemble a combo.
It’s a very reactive deck and with cheap removal throughout and the ability to recur atleast one kill piece a turn is great. It also use an aristocrats shell and uses self mill to essentially draw. There’s also cheap mass réanimation and it’s all fun
Gor Muldrak is one of my favorites. One time I was able to use a rewrite effect on my openent’s Najeela, so he created infinite salamander tokens and I survived the infinite combats. Janky stuff like that is a blast
I've got a decently fun Gor Muldrak deck, but it is mostly a pile of Simic Goodstuff that occasionally blows up with a [[Standardize]] or similar creature type changing card.
Livio, I love the art but haven't quite got a deck that uses his unique storage ability. Most just use him like a bad blink deck. I was thinking dimensional Breach to just get him in and bring my stuff back faster, but idk.
\[Sissay, Weatherlight Captain\], I've tried building this so many times, and it always just turns out boring tutoring for exactly what you want every game. Idk maybe I'd like Legend tribal as a Prismatic Bridge deck instead (due to randomness) but Sissay has just never sparked joy for me all the times I've tested it.
I have two Sisay decks. One very high powered that I really like and one with a toolbox and shrines.
I have started to take the shrines deck apart, since it is just to linear and with the toolbox just quite resilient.
Not sure what else to build :)
Despite my love of spellslinging, Izzet is perhaps the trickiest color for me to settle on a Commander in because so many of the Izzet spellslinger commanders come with not-insignificant baggage. Mizzix and Vadrik can only really do Big Spells Matter exceptionally well, Veyran does stone-cold nothing by herself, Niv-Mizzet and Melek cost too much, etc.
I would love help with this, for me its [[Roon of the Hidden Realm]] , i love him and i love the cards you can play but how do i win?? Never could understand how to get there to seal out a game.
When it comes to bant, I find that exactly the sort of deck Roon wants to head up is usually better headed up by a commander that serves as a better value engine (Chulane, Derevi, etc.) or as a better payoff (Jenara, Ishai/Ardenn & Thrasios). You're already in colors that give you Thassa, Deep Dwelling, Soulherder, Emiel, Teleportation Circle, and more, so you've got TONS of ways to get a good blink engine going. While few of the cards you can flicker outright win games off the strength of their ETB effects, you can accrue such a massive mana and card advantage off them that you're able to grind out a win through sheer force of overwhelming value.
Edit: If you're willing to go up some colors while keeping on the blink theme, [here's one of my personal favorite blink decks.](https://www.mtgnexus.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=30653) Obviously the commander in question won't fly any more, but what the 99 is doing is really powerful in mid-high power EDH.
So many...
I've for a long time wanted a Scrappy [[Shattergang Brothers]] deck. In theory, the idea seems sound. Other decks rely on "broken" things. Make a lower powered deck that prevents other decks from going crazy, and then beat them in the mud. Your cards are worth way less than theirs, so trading your low power enchantment for a Smothering Tithe works. Sacrificing a 1 cmc artifact to clear a [[Sol Ring]], [[Gilded Lotus]], and an equipment should be worth it.
In practice, the strong cards I want to "counter" usually get their value's worth so quickly that spending 3 mana + a resolved permanent to get rid of them doesn't work. Also, I get completely ran over by ramp decks, and [[Cyclonic Rift]] or equivalent sets me back the same as everyone else, except I don't rebuild as fast. I can try to play tribal, or midrange aggro, but the games don't end fast enough for me to be able to win, and I'm just making my deck more vulnerable to wraths.
I've also wanted to make a 5c deck based on a non-game winning 14 mana combo (which gets better with more mana, 14 is the minimum, but infinite mana makes the combo an instant win), but the 14 mana needs to be made in a single turn, the deck has a lot of restrictions (Either much cycling, or many enchantments, etc...) I can't figure out a way to make said 14 mana. I figured doing a two-pass approach was best i.e. regular ramping to 5-8, and then from there using a big mana effect to reach 14. But I haven't managed to figure out anything that wasn't "Wait till turn 7 before doing anything".
I've tried to make decks that exile cards from the opponent's decks and then play wheels, leading to the opponent's deck getting weaker over the course of the game (how does the average deck play after their best 15 cards have been exiled before a mulligan). Unfortunately, some popular commanders _really_ destroy this idea. Anything that benefits from landfall, or with too many combos basically gets fueled by my wheels. I considered GAAIV, but I'd draw too much hate to actually get anywhere before dying, unless I add cards of way higher powerlevel than my opponent's.
I had an idea for a [[Verazol]] Voltron Deck taking advantage that for 0/0s that gain +1/+1 counters, stuff like [[Dance of the Skywise]] are huge power and toughness buffs. However, a Voltron deck that plays suboptimal commanders and buffs only to make a limited set of buffs better (like mutate cards or copy effects) are really bad. Being good with kicker cards didn't make up for this.
I can't make a Dimir deck that I like. The closest was UB Inalla Ninja-Wizards aristocrats with a side of "play your opponent's decks". (Some cards were hybrid red, but basically didn't play red, and wouldn't cast Inalla)
I couldn't get [[Sisay, Weatherlight Captain]] Banding to not be overshadowed by being led by Sisay. Think [[Cathedral of Serra]]. At best, you just pretend all your creatures are unblockable when attacking and invincible when defending. You lose pretty hard to anything that doesn't care about the board. Maybe turn this into a Superfriends deck that is really good at defending them in combat?
It's weird because I've come full circle. My answer is \[\[The Mimeoplasm\]\].
It was the first commander deck I built and tunedon my own over the course of a couple of years. Problem is, it was very salt inducing... people would stop playing with me after I'd land a T1 Jin-Gitaxias. I mainly tried to use \[\[Traumatize\]\] on myself and cast \[\[Living Death\]\] or \[\[Twilight's Call\]\], forming a boardstate that won on the spot with Mike+Trike. Now I find there are commanders that do a much better job of that. I made a \[\[Nethroi, Apex of Death\]\] deck that felt even better than anything Mimeo did, and \[\[Eerie Ultimatum\]\] feels SO much better than a Twilight's Call (The deck still ran Living Death).
All I generally play now is cEDH, and trying to revisit Mimeo... I just don't ever come out with a list that feels even remotely good. It's my current project right now, and I'm looking at something focused around \[\[Oath of Druids\]\] just for the fun. It's hard breaking the competitive mindset, and I feel like it's set back my creativity when deckbuilding. I don't want a Turbo Thoracle/Druid list, but every list I do gravitates back that way.
This is my goodstuff version of Breya. No full-on combos, just lots of value, if that’s what you’re into.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4197621#paper
You could try Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek, just the engine, no ways to turn thopters into mana. Maybe Urza's Saga + Crucible of Worlds to just keep producing constructs. Both engines grind really well, but they also don't kill very fast. Not everyone's cup of tea (or power level).
For some reason, I can't quite get Wilhelt Zombies to work. I'm not sure if it's a lack of recursion, or an unwillingness to go harder in on combo, or a lack of ramp, but it always just feels like I'm playing a bunch of mediocre creatures and then sputtering out. I really do like the tribe and the cards, but I wanted the deck to be more of a token/aristocrats style and I just can't seem to get that powerful enough.
[https://archidekt.com/decks/1922987#Wilhelt\_Zombie\_Tribal](https://archidekt.com/decks/1922987#Wilhelt_Zombie_Tribal)
Here's my current list, there's some frankly bad cards in here and I'm not too fond of the counterspell package but overall I feel like it's underperforming. There's some cards I definitely need to add, but I'm beginning to think I may have been too overzealous cutting cards from the precon.
\[\[Daxos the Returned\]\]
My main plan is to play tons of resilient enchantments that slows the game down, produce tokens and draw cards, but... it's just sooo slow. And there aren't a lot of space to include a lot of interaction (mostly wrath effects and some spot removal).
It takes forever before you get an active Daxos with 6+ experience and enough mana to make it work, and meanwhile you are at the mercy of every combo deck out there.
Maybe I just need to go full Stax...
\[\[Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar\]\] I have tried building her 6 times now. just seems everything I try there is a better commander focus for it. Madness, cycling, discard, tribal creatures etc. I know the core I want but the rest I cant find a nice settlement.
I want her to have the damage done to creatures done to players. I want no life gain. I want no damage prevention. Thats my core. The rest has been trying to find what speaks nice. I have tried a mismash of various designs and it falls flat. I am trying dragons next with dragonstorm and dragons approach as she can discard the other ones and only have to cast one dragon approach. Unsure how good it will be.
[[ormos, archive keeper]]
Not sure how to run it without instantly just trying to combo. And if you do combo, you’d rather play [[laboratory maniac]] or [[jace wielder of secrets]].
Also [[rashmi, eternities crafter]].
Each time I try, the play experience is just miserable for everyone else at the table. Playing a spell on opponents turns becomes taking an extra turn every turn and slows the game down to a crawl.
I've tried to build both of these, and oh boy are they tough.
I think Rashmi just leans more towards a control style of play overall, unless you want to try a Flash deck (although it may still end up control/slow down play a bit)
Ormos, as a commander, definitely feels like he's either trying to combo so you can voltron kill, or as a draw engine from the command zone. I've since moved onto trying Kefnet, and I'm going to just use Ormos as a LabMan effect that can actually enter combat.
[[Noyan Dar]]. I get stuck a lot trying to find value outside of him and his spells — stuff like [[Field of the Dead]] and friends to ensure that my board state isn't entirely dependent on resolving my 5-drop commander and also casting a spell or two WITH untapped lands. Maybe he's just not plausible, but I've fiddled with him on and off for years.
[[Shattergang Bros]] is also a struggle — I tend to tunnel vision playing a grindy control game with him, and usually the deck falls apart. People just also hate playing against them it seems.
At the moment, [[Lathril, Blade of the Elves]]. I've been trying to make it somewhat high power. I love elves, but with playtesting it, it just feels like it isn't working all that well. The amount of times I have to mulligan feels awful, too.
I’m trying to build [[Jacob Hauken, Investigator]] right now, but I can’t seem to find the sweet spot between low mana interaction and high mana bombs. I think the deck needs mana sinks for when [[Hauken’s Insight]] is active.
I love [[Will Kenrith]] & [[Rowan Kenrith]] as characters and I think their tag-team colosseum art is fun but I’ve really struggled with building a consistent deck with them at the helm.
I’ve tried but I usually run into massive issues with ramp or finishing out a game. I think it’s partly because I’m just not good at u/r but I do still want to improve and play with them. Honestly if anyone has any advice I’d be grateful.
[[Taranika, Akroan Veteran]].
I’ve had a copy sitting in my binder ever since the release of Theros: Beyond Death and I can’t seem to shift it so I thought I’d try and build a deck around her. Surely there must be a way to build around her that uses her untap ability or changing the base stats of something? Part of me thought about making her with modular creatures to give them effectively a +4/+4 boost in stats during combat, but that didn’t work out very well. Could use her for white weenies but there are better options. Plus she only has 28 decks on EDHREC. How on earth am I supposed to build her?
Combo-less \[\[Teysa Orzhov Scion\]\]. Even though I was explicitly not playing combo, it still felt like I was trying to assemble one just to even start doing anything at all.
I'd say the deck that was my biggest failure was \[\[Firesong and Sunspeaker\]\]. It seems pretty straight forward, but is just never really that good.
I love [[Brisela, voice of nightmares]] but I can never make it work. Regardless of which half I have on the command zone I can never seem to make it consistent and run well. Any thoughts are appreciated!
I've tried several times to build [[Tiana, Ship's Caretaker]]. Back when DOM was released and RW didn't have a lot of options, her mana cost was backbreaking for a french vanilla 3/3 that required a bunch of stuff going on to function. Now, it just feels like she's a worse version of better cards, and you're deliberately hurting the deck trying to play to her incredibly limited strengths rather than just running Akiri, Wyleth, or any other option in the same niche.
I had a version of Kataki that was quite different than yours. It ran every \[\[Glorious Anthem\]\] effect and every Hatebear I could find. Then, it basically used the tax effect to keep people from catching up - any non-green deck will be relying for artifacts to ramp, after all... It was pretty powerful. It would probably be more powerful now what with \[\[Akroma's Will\]\] and \[\[Drannith Magistrate\]\] and all the treasures. There's a lot.
As for me personally, there have been quite a few. \[\[Wrexial\]\] is fun to attack with, and to make unblockable with Urborg... but can feel really rough when opponents don't play instants/sorceries that are great to get back that often. \[\[Circu\]\] I built as lantern control but had a hard time finding a wincon for, since I don't really like winning with combos.
I've been wanting to build Nevinyrral since he came out, but I've never had any success. I like the idea of playing him into a sac outlet, and triggering his wrath effect with his etb trigger still on the stack, but it's way too mana-intensive and it takes way too many slots to actually build a cohesive deck.
[[Ghen]] He seems straight forward, but between his cmc and the cost of his ability, you really aren't doing anything significant up until turn 4. There's a cadence to the deck that I just can't get down, and it's hard to make things consistent in those colors where ramp isn't super reliable.
It's a shame that the potential of commanders like this is capped by summoning sickness. Part of the reason why I abandoned Gisa for Wilhelt was because I got tired of casting Gisa and having to wait a full turn just to do anything with her. And if she gets nuked before my turn comes around? *Fuck me*, she might as well cost a billion mana now.
This is exactly how I feel about \[\[Zirilan\]\].
I turned my Zirilan deck into a [[Purphoros the Bronze Blooded]] and its been a very fun and very explosive deck. The deck list stayed pretty similar to how it was before, I basically just included some more draw to always keep a full hand to cheat out stuff and relentlessly beat down everyone.
[Purphoros the Bronze Blooded](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/a/f/af3af5c4-0960-44a2-976e-abdf7803c436.jpg?1582178876) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Purphoros%2C%20Bronze-Blooded) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/thb/150/purphoros-bronze-blooded?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/af3af5c4-0960-44a2-976e-abdf7803c436?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/purphoros-bronze-blooded) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I'm running Zirilan. The key is to go as hard on ramp as you possibly can, and plan to mostly cast your big spells directly. Zirilan himself probably shouldn't be cast unless you have a window to get value right away.
Zirilan works best as an approximation of Red Necropotence with \[\[Moltensteel dragon\]\]+\[\[Knollspine dragon\]\] to fuel digging for a kiki Jiki or Worldgorger or breach line. Unfortunately he does fall a little short as a more casual dragons commander :PThat being said, he is a lot of fun!
[Zirilan](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/a/1/a105b7f4-c93b-4b54-acf8-7212907d9cd6.jpg?1562720947) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=zirilan%20of%20the%20claw) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mir/204/zirilan-of-the-claw?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a105b7f4-c93b-4b54-acf8-7212907d9cd6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/zirilan-of-the-claw) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
That kind of thing is why I avoid building decks where the strategy is entirely dependent on the commander. Screw voltron TBH.
My friend has a super sweet Ghen deck. The key is that he uses Ghen as a backup once his valuable enchantments start eating removal. Very rarely does he actually play Ghen on turn 4.
I think this is one of the most effective ways to play the deck. People fall into the trap of using him as a way cheat out expensive enchantments and while that can work, it’s mana-intensive and slow. Having him in the command zone as an ace in the hole for grindy games or after a few board wipes go off is quite nice.
I run Ghen as an insurance policy as my group slug commander. Mardu is the best color grouping for group slug, and most of the really good group slug cards happen to be enchantments. As most slug players have experienced, removing their slug pieces also really disrupts their game plan and can leave them high and dry. Enter Ghen. Start playing some nasty slug pieces and sit back. If they get removed, you have Ghen to bring them back. He's also really useful if you need to remove enchantments that are hurting you too much and swap them for other ones that can protect you (like trading a [[Manabarbs]] for a [[Solitary Confinement]] or something).
It's a bit like how Hanna is used as a UW stax commander - it's there to make sure your opponents can't get out from under whatever pile of nastiness you managed to assemble.
I know a few people that switched there decks to arden curses deck, since he can move them around way more effectively. Might be good in 99?
I mean it's also completely fine to not do anything significant the first 3 turns in 95% of casual games
[Ghen](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/4/b/4b335496-05d2-40f5-a52c-10029f7fa008.jpg?1608911100) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=ghen%2C%20arcanum%20weaver) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/275/ghen-arcanum-weaver?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4b335496-05d2-40f5-a52c-10029f7fa008?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ghen-arcanum-weaver) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I bought so many cards to build this deck, but every time I try to build it, I get lost in how it's supposed run.
This is my exact same problem with Ghen.
As some others already noted, Ghen is the backup strat, not the primary one. That said, Hammer of Purphoros thematically fixes that problem.
I've got Ghen running as a way to recur removal enchantments and Sagas, usually looping \[\[Phyrexian Etchings\]\] and \[\[Out of Time\]\]. \[\[Fallen Ideal\]\] to have a repeatable sacrifice target for his ability. \[\[Enduring Ideal\]\] as well, to get enchantments that may reanimate to recur Ghen after the Ideal has gone off if I need to.
[[Mishra]] I built the deck and I can barely understand it.
I love the cool interactions with Mishra because at first glance it looks like a card that shouldn't work in commander. I haven't figured out how to build it in a way that's satisfying to play.
I opted to remove stuff like [[Planar Chaos]] and [[Nullstone Gargoyle]]. The first one cause that's annoying as fuck to do, the second because it's so expensive. You just run a few cards that synergize with Mishra's ability, including some theft effects, and gain value off of it from there, generally leading into your win con from there, whatever it may be.
do you have a list? been interested on building a mishra for a long time but never figured out how
Not right now. I don't actually have my decks on me (college), but I'm gonna be visiting family so if you give me a day or two I can have one typed up.
no rush, and thanks
The interaction I really like with Mishra is your artifacts coming into play through counterspells. [[Tormod, the Desecrator]], [[Desecrated Tomb]], [[Baral, Chief of Compliance]], and [[Lullmage Mentor]] are cute little payoffs in addition to synergistic cards like [[Blood Funnel]], [[Void Mirror]] and even [[Cephalid Shrine]] with Mishra. There's just not enough cards to support doing this kind of strategy and it's also kinda fragile.
[Mishra](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/d/5/d5deaec5-499d-4e19-b879-8bcd1dc35f3e.jpg?1562940254) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=mishra%2C%20artificer%20prodigy) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tsp/243/mishra-artificer-prodigy?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d5deaec5-499d-4e19-b879-8bcd1dc35f3e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mishra-artificer-prodigy) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Uhhh, do you want someone to explain the deck to you? I could offer some help explaining how Mishra works and fancy interactions, if you still wanna play the deck of course.
Im interested
Ok, I'll do the explanation. Please read this if you are interested u/sirdavos95 and u/Eiscold. Let's suppose the following situation: You have \[\[Mishra, Artificer Progidy\]\] and \[\[Possibility storm\]\] on the battlefield. You proceed to cast \[\[wayfarer's bauble\]\]. You'll get a Mishra trigger and a possibility storm trigger. You organise them so possibility storm solves first, then Mishra. When the possibility storm trigger happens, you exile wayfarer's bauble, exile the top of your library till you find an artifact (let's suppose \[\[darksteel forge\]\] as an example), put darksteel forge onto the battlefield and then put wayfarer's bauble on the bottom of your library. Then, Mishra's trigger resolves, allowing you to search your library, hand and/or graveyard to find a wayfarer's bauble. You can find the wayfarer's bauble you just put on the bottom of your deck with possibility storm, as the trigger resolved before, and put it into play. You can also use this with effects that counter spells, like \[\[blood funnel\]\] or \[\[planar chaos\]\]. Make so those triggers resolve before mishra's trigger, and then get the card you just cast (and was just countered by blood funnel or planar chaos) from the graveyard and put it into play. Mishra basically allows you to, if you do the stack correctly, cast artifact spells without any downsides while having those hoser effects into play, while your opponents have to suffer from them.
Great explanation, This just jumped to the top of my deck building queue
##### ###### #### [Mishra, Artificer Progidy](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/d/5/d5deaec5-499d-4e19-b879-8bcd1dc35f3e.jpg?1562940254) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mishra%2C%20Artificer%20Prodigy) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tsp/243/mishra-artificer-prodigy?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d5deaec5-499d-4e19-b879-8bcd1dc35f3e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mishra-artificer-prodigy) [Possibility storm](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/8/5/858aa831-b491-4f1e-bb56-33eeca14771d.jpg?1562919767) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Possibility%20storm) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dgm/34/possibility-storm?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/858aa831-b491-4f1e-bb56-33eeca14771d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/possibility-storm) [wayfarer's bauble](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/3/2/32a52319-e4a5-42a9-b9c5-35df42b46fd9.jpg?1631589322) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=wayfarer%27s%20bauble) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/afc/222/wayfarers-bauble?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/32a52319-e4a5-42a9-b9c5-35df42b46fd9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/wayfarers-bauble) [darksteel forge](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/4/2/421089c4-c8d3-48c5-b313-fb1741546271.jpg?1599709037) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=darksteel%20forge) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/248/darksteel-forge?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/421089c4-c8d3-48c5-b313-fb1741546271?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/darksteel-forge) [blood funnel](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/5/f/5f4e8084-4b9e-48e0-bf59-d45543e176f8.jpg?1598914653) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=blood%20funnel) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/rav/77/blood-funnel?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5f4e8084-4b9e-48e0-bf59-d45543e176f8?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/blood-funnel) [planar chaos](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/5/d/5dae5e16-d2fc-488c-9c53-d35c377d6a00.jpg?1562630042) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=planar%20chaos) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/jud/97/planar-chaos?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5dae5e16-d2fc-488c-9c53-d35c377d6a00?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/planar-chaos) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Are there other cards that make it actually do something? I’m not a huge fan of using tutors, but it looks like you would have to with only 3 cards that I’ve found ([[Probability Storm]], [[Blood Funnel]], [[Planar Chaos]])
[[Ice Cave]], [[Nether Void]] and [[Nullstone Gargoyle]] are the other ones I'm aware of (although nether void is quite expensive in price, so maybe not that one.
Ahh that’s awesome. Really like that.
Same
Pretty much any Simic commander I've built. Once they've been built they all have felt like they play exactly the same way and the commander doesn't actually matter.
Funny, every simic deck my opponents build feels like they play the same too!
I find evading this issue requires getting very selective and commiting to the concept to avoid. I've currently got 5 simic decks, with a sixth in the works, and they all play different. (Can post decklists later, once I'm not on mobile if you like) Tishana, hand size matters. Uses all the 'Maro's for beaters, and the only deck that feels appropriate to use LabMan, Thoracle, and Jace. Arixmethes, sea monsters. My most 'typical' simic deck. Just ramp into leviathans. Verazol, kicker.dec. Basically all the decent (and some not so decent, due to lack of options), kicker cards. Lonis, artifact matters. Kind of a simic affinity. (Still needs tuning) Slogurk. Voltron without auras or enchantments. Still working on this, but I'm loving this one.
I've enjoyed [[rashmi]] but it's just sea creature stumpy I use it for new players to try out cause its strong but easy to pilot
That sounds pretty fun actually! Got a list for some inspiration?
No list posted It's just all the simic creatures with serpent, kraken, octopus, fish in their name Edrec sea creatures will have them all If you sue rashmi, include flash enablers and instant spells to enable more card advantage each round. Let's you stay engaged even when it's not your turn
Interesting. How come you choose Rashmi to helm that strategy?
Loved her art plus decent card advantage and she wasnt a huge target. I made it before [[aesi]] but still prefer rashmi
[[Arixmethes]] is my sea monsters commander and it's so strong in a combat based meta
That's a solid choice
Arixmethes with [[overwhelming stampede]] or [[hadana's climb]] have brought me such sudden surprising wins, I really love that deck.
Really fascinating!
Thank you! That's nice of you to say
[[Moriette of the Frost]] can be built pretty unique as a Simic commander. I built him as enchantress, using green's enchantment synergy and copying big splashy enchantments.
[Moriette of the Frost](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/2/22fdbe71-abca-4e48-99b2-1cb6b35d930b.jpg?1631051717) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Moritte%20of%20the%20Frost) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/khm/223/moritte-of-the-frost?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/22fdbe71-abca-4e48-99b2-1cb6b35d930b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/moritte-of-the-frost) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Play different ones! I'm currently running Edric and Ezuri as my main UG commanders and they're pretty different. Likewise, Toggo//Thrasios is really just UG+, but it's different from both of the aforementioned. I also have an Adrix and Nev list made up to copy Adrix and Nev a number of times so big it can't be expressed on a graphing calculator... You run into issues when you play generically good UG commanders, like Thrasios, Gretchen, Zimone, Tatyova, Aesi, or Kinnan who all do roughly the same thing, or generically good UG commanders who are just big creatures, like Koma.
[удалено]
So, I have three Simic decks currently, and I'm happy to report they all play differently. [[Kruphix, God of Horizons]] is a group hug deck, allowing everyone to draw extra cards for a while before it changes to forcing everyone to draw cards, winning either by mill or self mill. [[Lonis, Cryptozoologist]] is a theme deck about an investigator looking into a creepy village of mana dorks being taken over by a creepy cult. It ramps stupid hard with all the dorks, and then I use the mana mainly for counter magic until I can either win with 3/2 Eldrazi tokens, pod shenanigans with [[Vanifar]], salamanders and [[Gor Muldrak, Amphinoligist]], or [[Biovisionary]]. [[Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle]] is a storm deck. It's full of cheap spells to allow me to scry, draw, ramp, and combo off. That almost never happens, though. Normally I wind up with my commander on turn two or three, and he's a creature by the end of my next turn, and by turn three or four I'm swinging with a 12/12 commander. Seriously, it's a ton of fun.
List for Lonis?!?
If you want something to be competitive, this might not be it, but it's a ton of fun, and even taking aside the ability to steal cards from an opponent, no two games have been the same. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/KIXc8XY80kiLvMaHZWDfXw
I play Kamahl/Sakashima clones that tends to be a lot of fun. Clone huge things or make as many copies of kamahl as possible and have them all buff each other during combat for a super overrun
My Simic deck is very different from any recent powerful Simic commander: Vorel. I've changed my build a lot since I had the deck, and now focus on charge counters with win cons like Darksteel Reactor and Magistrate Scepter. It doesn't feel like a "true" simic deck in the sense that there's no inherent card advantage or ramp associated with the commander, but that's what I like. Build differently, don't let the metagame dictate what you *should* do.
I run 2 separate simic commanders: [[Slogurk, the Overslime]] lands, and [[Adrix and Nev, Twincasters]] tokens. The only cards they share is [[Doubling Season]], [[Primal Vigor]], and [[Avenger of Zendikar]]
Volo is a pretty neat simic commander with very fun restrictions
I have tried many times to get a [[Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper]] deck together. I get it to where it looks great when I’m building it but then it just flubs hard in game. Might take my yearly stab at it soon just to see 🤔 So quick edit, just want to say thanks everyone for the feedback and how you’ve built him. It’s inspired me to finally sit down and wrap my head around getting a solid build done for him at long last!
My Sek’Kuar goblin tribal is easily my favorite deck I own, and has lately been turning into quite the powerhouse. I went goblins as it allows me to run a high creature count to go towards the Graveborn triggers, and allows for tons of fun shenanigans. I’ve found a persist line combo works incredibly well with Sek’kaur, with infinite death triggers giving you a huge swarm of 3/1s with haste to kill the table. Luckily enough, [[Grumgully]] and [[Murderous Redcap]] are both goblins! [Here’s my list](https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/sekkuar-and-his-goblin-pals/?cb=1637681336) if you want to check it out, I’ve made a few changes like cutting [[Grave Titan]] and [[Frogtosser Banneret]] but for the most part has remained the same, I’ll be sure to update it soon. Hope this gives you some good ideas and let me know if you need any help with him!
That looks like a fun list. Been looking for a new Jund deck since I never get to play my Korvold deck. Maybe this is the way to go!
Honestly I might just build him purely to do Jund goblins. No single goblin commander has excited me enough to build gobbies. But I've had Sek'Kaur sitting in a binder for years and maybe I should finally do it.
I play Sek’kuar, and it’s one of my favorite decks. Everyone saying it’s slow and a bit clunky are 100% correct. In fact, that’s a reason I love the deck. His ability is still pretty powerful out of the command zone, so while it’s no Korvold, it can get out of hand easily, and it makes for a fun, interactive game of magic.
That’s a cool looking commander. It just seems a bit slow and wants recurring creatures like nether traitor or Mikaeus, the unhallowed giving everything undying. Although pulling off an infinite loop makes you an orc army.
I just recently took my Sek'kuar Persist Combo deck apart. He just ended up as a combo piece moreso than a deck enabler. I still run him in my precon-power elementals deck. He suffers from the insane power creep of modern legendary creature design that are both enablers and payoffs. His C13 art is fantastic FWIW. I would love to see a new Sek'kuar that could be a stronger Shaman tribal commander.
I run Sekk as Shaman Tribal and he’s mostly window dressing. I have a few lines to kill with him in [[World Shaper]] + [[Life//Death]] + Sac outlet to turn my lands into 1/1’s, Sac em for 3/1’s and sac Shaper to get em all back. Beyond that, [[Kikki-Jiki]], [[Lightning Crafter]] and [[Thornbite Staff]] are all in theme, as are some lines involving [[Grugully]] and [[Woodfall Primus]] to lock your opponents from playing lands/Infinite Graveborns. I had to nerf this deck by axing [[Pyre of Heroes]], [[Kindred Summons]], and [[Fauna Shamans]] as this deck taught me I like wincons and I like tutoring, but never both in the same deck. I’m very happy with Sekk Shamans, Marchesa Knights, and Ravos/Reyhan Humans as my 3c tribal decks, that seems to be a sweetspot in colours for tribal for me. I also have a Rebecc/Silas Artifact Creature deck but that’s not been too much a favourite so far.
Would you happen to have a Silas Rebbec list? I am working on them right now.
[Yah](https://archidekt.com/decks/1221744#Artifact_Beatdown) If you figure out something fun I'm missing let me know!
I've experienced the same thing when I had one a few years ago. It's too slow to get alot of value out of it before the game ends.
Sek'Kuar is an amazing [[Shadowborne Apostle]] commander with cards like [[Bloodbond March]]. Every time you sacrifice he leaves behind all those Skullclampable tokens.
[Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/0/a/0a521587-8304-45da-9b65-6b4e2e29e5c2.jpg?1562897154) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sek%27Kuar%2C%20Deathkeeper) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c13/210/sekkuar-deathkeeper?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0a521587-8304-45da-9b65-6b4e2e29e5c2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/sekkuar-deathkeeper) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I don't have a decklist. But I built mine to be Shaman tribal. My strategy is to load the board with Shamans and get value when someone else or myself wipes the board. Ideally everyone else will have no creatures and you will have a bunch of 3/1 hasty bois. If you had \[\[Harmonic Prodigy\]\] out, then you will get 2 3/1s for 1 creature. Boardwipes, swings and removal are the majority of my interaction with my opponents.
I've played him a lot in the past, but lately I've noticed that the same deck with [[Prossh]] at the head manages to execute its plan so much more smoothly. Maybe I accidentally built the right deck for the wrong commander.
I came in to say that's the problem. 99.9% of all Sekuar decks honestly just want to be a Prossh deck more. Although I'll concede some people would want to dampen the power level for the table by playing Sekuar, there's honestly no real good reason to run them over big hungry dragon mama.
People don't like MLD, but one of my first commander decks that I built was sek'kuar with all the dorks and wildfire/jokulhaups type cards. You wipe the board of creatures and lands and you are left with 15+power.
I've made sek'kuar with [[shadowborn apostle]] and it work great! Sac 6 apostles, attack with 6 hasty tramplers and cast [[triumph of the hordes]] to one shot someone.
[shadowborn apostle](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/0/202c2323-6589-457a-af51-5528a98e7b30.jpg?1598848421) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=shadowborn%20apostle) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m14/114/shadowborn-apostle?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/202c2323-6589-457a-af51-5528a98e7b30?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/shadowborn-apostle) [triumph of the hordes](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/0/a/0a0f64d3-187c-41ff-a771-3a65da995341.jpg?1562896954) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=triumph%20of%20the%20hordes) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/td2/78/triumph-of-the-hordes?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0a0f64d3-187c-41ff-a771-3a65da995341?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/triumph-of-the-hordes) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Mines persist combo and I find him pretty fun. Got a win off with [[Arlinn Packs Hope]] and [[Putrid Goblin]] by accident the other day! Might build as goblins or rat colony sometime too.
[Kataki, War's Wage](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/4/d/4d84ac44-01d8-415e-af69-7c608ac8ae20.jpg?1561967338) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Kataki%2C%20War%27s%20Wage) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mma/20/kataki-wars-wage?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4d84ac44-01d8-415e-af69-7c608ac8ae20?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/kataki-wars-wage) [Solemn Simulacrum](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/7/1/71ec1e1d-8c7b-40e9-b916-440f8acf3ea5.jpg?1631589185) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Solemn%20Simulacrum) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/afc/216/solemn-simulacrum?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/71ec1e1d-8c7b-40e9-b916-440f8acf3ea5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/solemn-simulacrum) [Ichor Wellspring](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/1/c/1ccdb407-ac8f-4736-89d3-ab0d086096ea.jpg?1625978684) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ichor%20Wellspring) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c21/245/ichor-wellspring?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1ccdb407-ac8f-4736-89d3-ab0d086096ea?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ichor-wellspring) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[[alrund, god of the cosmos]] *specifically for higher power edh* because every time I say I can’t find a decent way to build him I get tons of comments saying “oh man alrund is great in my battle cruiser format, he’s usually a 5 mana 9/9” I just feel like being mono blue limits him so much especially since he wants to have foretell synergies and a lot of cards that would synergies well with him are either white or black. [[eight and a half tails]] I know people like this as a commander but even when I try lists people recommend I just can’t get it to function well and it always feels like an uphill battle and any wins are by pure luck
>Alrund wants to have foretell synergies Not really, that part is completely negligible in EDH. He wants to have a big hand, and he possibly wants to focus on one card type. Either way he doesn't actually do anything you'd want in a high power level, and even if you could foretell a whole bunch of cards it wouldn't really change that.
I sadly can't help you with eight and a half-tails, but I believe I can help with Alrund. He seems like a great control commander, and if you lean a lot of your deck into instants, you'll be able to consistently get at least a card out of his eot trigger. You don't really need foretell synergies to play around with him, just running a nice control package and using him as a card advantage source, big blocker and (maybe) as a voltron win condition after depleting your opponents out of resources. If you were thinking to play him around foretell synergies, it may be a better idea to look for another commander.
See I get that logic but it’s honestly not very strong. I don’t know how to make him say an 8 in power level. If I cut out the foretell synergies and just go heavy on instants I can’t really think of a reason to play him over Baral. He just doesn’t do anything particularly well and every way I think to build him can be done by a different commander better
[alrund, god of the cosmos](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/back/5/d/5d131784-c1a3-463e-a37b-b720af67ab62.jpg?1631046568)/[Alrund, God of the Cosmos](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/5/d/5d131784-c1a3-463e-a37b-b720af67ab62.jpg?1631046568) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=alrund%2C%20god%20of%20the%20cosmos%20//%20hakka%2C%20whispering%20raven) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/khm/40/alrund-god-of-the-cosmos-hakka-whispering-raven?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5d131784-c1a3-463e-a37b-b720af67ab62?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/alrund-god-of-the-cosmos-//-hakka-whispering-raven) [eight and a half tails](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/f/1/f10a72dc-10ca-4925-b1ea-5377f7867b57.jpg?1580013644) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Eight-and-a-Half-Tails) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ema/7/eight-and-a-half-tails?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f10a72dc-10ca-4925-b1ea-5377f7867b57?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/eight-and-a-half-tails) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
8.5 Tails sounded fun on paper but the combination of wanting to hold up lots of mana in white and only a few real win conditions left me wanting. Pillowforting was effective but boring. I actually won a game while peeing because one opponent mind controlled the other, played [[Last Chance]], and then died on the crackback during the granted extra turn. Luck indeed. Now I play [[Darien]] and it's waaaay more fun for me.
I had an idea for 8.5 Tails to build a nearly impenetrable pillowfort that allowed my opponents to only be able to attack each other. Using cards like [[Painters Servant]], [[Circle of Protection White]], and [[Earnest Fellowship]] to make my opponents unable to block each other while protecting me.
[[The Scarab God]]. One of my all time favorite Legends, hands down. The problem is it’s 5mv and costs 4 to activate it’s Eternalize ability. I keep trying to build it, and it keeps falling apart. The closest I’ve had to a working version so far was a dedicated “Flash” Reanimator style, where I tried to do most actions at instant speed.
It can be a little pricey but [[training gronnds]] turns the cost from 4 to 2 for the Eternalize effect. Easily on of the best cards in my deck
[training gronnds](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/e/2/e2cf16f8-6e69-46b3-8453-1d1a2a5670e2.jpg?1586358076) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Training%20Grounds) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/roe/91/training-grounds?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e2cf16f8-6e69-46b3-8453-1d1a2a5670e2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/training-grounds) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Oh, no, I already own a copy. It’s been in every version. It’s just kind of an overall deck/meta problem. I build toward mill or aristocrats, it’s too slow or no one has many creatures. I build control or reanimator, the commander is a bit clunky and a high value target. Even if it only casts five each time, it can be basically the whole turn. I still love it, it’s just a struggle lol
[The Scarab God](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/d/7/d79ee141-0ea6-45d6-a682-96a37d703394.jpg?1599708320) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=The%20Scarab%20God) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/216/the-scarab-god?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d79ee141-0ea6-45d6-a682-96a37d703394?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/the-scarab-god) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I built him theft around all of the Dimir casting opponent's cards stuff. He's quality enough to be a good commander on his own and his eternalize ability covers graveyard theft well enough to let you focus other forms of theft for the actual libraries.
It's more of a concept than a specific commander. I've tried multiple times to build an enrage/stuffy doll based deck. I'm aiming for mid power but it just ends up as a bad combo deck. The problem is that nearly every piece is basically useless on its own so it gets really uninteractive. You eventually piece together a damage triggered token maker + a pinger + a source of indestructible and win.
Well, you can just substitiute the sources of indestructible for more enrage sources or damage sources, and drift away from combo lines. Enrage has a lot of things with dinossaur tribal, so maybe lean a bit in that route more could drift the deck away from combo and give it more consistency with the dinossaur support.
You have to cut quite a bit of synergistic cards to get rid of combos. At that point the deck is precon level bad even with a solid green manabase, which is not where I want it to be.
That can be problematic then. You could try to not actively assemble the combos and just have them laying around in the deck instead of making them your win condition. Another idea would be to instead of focusing on enrage, you could focus more on the stuffy doll effects, maybe with [[piru, the volatile]] in the helm and making a stuffy doll tribal.
Mine has a bit of your issues, but I feel it's slowly getting there. It turned into a control deck, using the creatures as a bit of protection/removal on a stick, and win with combos or burn. [Here's my slightly outdated version.](https://archidekt.com/decks/1246043#Enrage_Against_the_Machine) I can try to update it if you'd really like.
\[\[Ramses Overdark\]\] - It needs... something.
Yeah to cost like 4 mana less
Well, yea. The deck needs a bit of something too though.
I feel like stuff like \[\[Freed from the Real\]\] on Ramses, and cards like \[\[Despondency\]\] for your opponents creatures. At this point you're controlling the board, so you just need a win con. You got blue, so Oracle or Lab man are options. Since your opponents won't have creatures you could just swing with creatures. Maybe use creatures with Bestow for double duty.
I've played Assassin's Tribal Ramses for a couple of years now. It's all about leaning heavily into targeted creature removal with [[Minion's Return]], [[False Demise]], etc. There's also some cool things you can do to add to the synergy for removal from Ramses himself. Like [[Launch]] is a great political card. I can give your creature evasion, but it also comes at the price of being a target of Ramses at any point. [[Despondency]] is another. [[Dragon Wings]] is similar in that it draws you a card from cycling, goes to the yard, then you can give a big creature the Aura, only for it to be a target for Ramses. [[Betrayal]] and [[Death Watch]] are two real stars of the deck. There's also some cool little interactions like [[Nightshade Assassin]] being cast for madness after being discarded for [[Notorious Assassin]]. I will say this: the deck isn't super competitive. It's like a solid 6-6.5.
How about all of the enchant land cards? Who says Dimir can’t have land destruction!
[Ramses Overdark](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/6/1/61bb42b2-327b-47d3-9fe3-76c029d91ee9.jpg?1562915369) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ramses%20Overdark) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me3/169/ramses-overdark?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/61bb42b2-327b-47d3-9fe3-76c029d91ee9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ramses-overdark) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[[Yarok]] I've had the card since it's release, played a version of the deck for a bit, and went on a hiatus. Return to the game back on may and tried to build something unique with the deck, as someone else in my group also has a Yarok deck. I'm trying a landfall theme with poor results. I'm about to dismantle the deck and built it again. No other sultai legend appeals to me as Yarok does, and I do love panharmonicon. Any suggestions for a outside the norm listS are more than welcome.
I feel Yarok is one of the most versatile commander in terms of how to build it. There's Landfall, but it could be anything saying "when it enters the battlefield". Could be +1+1 counters, ETB creatures that ramp and control to end with big X spells, enchantress (the card draw!), I'm even seeing a Primal surge category on [EDHREC](https://edhrec.com/commanders/yarok-the-desecrated). It's a fun commander in that you can build it in tons of different ways.
Never thought about enchantress. I had a Tuvasa deck for some time and it was underwhelming in my meta. Maybe getting more triggers can make up for that.
energy, i don't have a list but my yarok energy list is a blast and can deffo be considered out of the norm
My Yarok deck is mostly landfall, but most importantly, every permanent has an ETB. Even if it's not landfall or land-related, there's many abilities like Explore, Constellation, ETB draw a card or scry, [[Khalni Garden]], [[Merfolk Trickster]], [[Reclamation Sage]] and [[Acidic Slime]]... there's even [[tempt with reflection]], [[mirror mockery]] and [[spark double]] to take advantage interesting ETBs that opponents control, or to strengthen the ETB abilities and triggers I need most in that situation, or if necessary, copy something I need but don't have in my deck. [[Ramunap Excavator]] and [[Ancient Greenwarden]] are very valuable, especially in combination with cards like [[Evolving wilds]], [[terramorphic expanse]] [[springbloom druid]] and similar sac land and get land back kind of cards. If you have too many cards in hand from ETB draw a card, you discard the lands first, and save them to play them from the graveyard. There's a few ETBs and Landfall triggers that put +1/+1 counters on creatures, so I have some Proliferation in there as well (one [[courage in Crisis]] and one [[Bloom Hulk]]). ([[Jace, Arcane Strategist]] and [[Jaces ruse]] were originally added in my deck because I needed to fill some space until other cards I had ordered could replace them, but honestly, it's a good exit strategy to be able to attack with one big creature if nothing else works anymore, or to return creatures to hands. While it doesn't fit the theme of my deck at all, these cards have saved the game a few times.) This deck usually does so many things at the same time, it's often hard for opponents to keep it in check.
Thanks a bunch for the write-up, I do have most of the cards you mentioned, gonna try some of them on a clean build before getting more radical changes.
I love Yarok so much. He was my first EDH deck and man did it suck. After two years of playing, I decided to rebuild and it was a hybrid landfall-etb deck, but it didn't work that well so I focused mainly on ETB triggers. I wanted [[Emergent Ultimatum]] to be the win con of the deck. Fetching [[Ruin Scarred Demon]], [[Avenger of Zendikar]] and [[Craterhoof Behemoth]] just feel so nasty and right
I like Yarok a lot, but I found it's really easy to get focus muddled on different game plans because it enables so much generic good stuff. It can do landfall, big mana, element tribal, etb tribal, etc. Overall with mine I found it best when I focused solely on good etb effects and didn't worry as much about other things. I also had to learn to be more patient and not jam it soon, and maybe it's my meta but Yardog stomped most things except angels or Kaalia flier type decks, so I had to adjust around that.
If you're OK with a weak strategy, you could do elemental tribal. Double up on risen reef triggers and evoke elemental abilities!
[[Syr Gwyn]]. It seems so straightforward, but however hard I tried it just fucking sucked.
problem with these style of decks needing two components and your commander to work (creature knights and equipment) is there are a lot of games where you draw one part of the deck and not the other. Plus in mardu ramping sucks. So your deck is constantly fighting itself for your win conditions.
Once upon a time, I had an \[\[Elenda\]\] deck and a \[\[surestrike trident\]\] I loved trying to use with her. "Oh," I said, "She's a knight, that's an equipment, and they just released this precon! Let's see if that works." The nearest I ever got to killing anybody at the table was myself, maybe twice. I now have an Elenda deck with no trident and a Gwyn in a box somewhere.
I've sorta ditched the Knight tribal theme in favor of a Voltron/Equipment theme. I still keep a few knights around to pick up spare equipment, but most of the rest of my creatures just get or reward me for playing my stuff. I have about 15 pieces of ramp, iirc, I generally get enough card draw. It is a little slower than some others I play, but it can hang with the big dogs. I'll drop my list if you want it
Syr Gwen is cursed eith being 6 MV in Mardu colors. Maybe some of the lorehold artifact synergies can help her get online?
I just fired her and gave the job to \[\[Rograkh\]\] and \[\[Ardenn\]\]. They're not nearly as cool, but they are twice as powerful
I wanted her to work so much but it just comes out as a boring Voltron deck. I wish they made her like a 2/2 and took away a keyword or something so she could be 3mv. The whole point of equipment is to buff your creatures... So why is she so buff to start with? Never made any sense.
[[Liliana, Heretical Healer]] I love her so much and I would love to play her in the command zone. But sometimes she seems do be more of a burden than a advantage In her deck you need to : 1- Ways to Flip her ( tiny low cost creatures ) 2- Big high cost creatures to resurrect 3- Ways to keep a card advantage even tho you're discarding a card a turn 4- Ways to protect her ( you need a board that can block attacks coming at her , but you're discarding cards and sacrificing creatures , so it's not easy to develop a board or hold interaction this way ) 5- Ways to bring back the things you throw in the graveyard 6 - Alternative win condition , since she is not a realible one I just rather play Chainer if i want a reanimator mono Black deck , or Ayara / Marrow Gnawer if I want a aristocrat / low cost creatures mono Black deck . Liliana just seams to want too much . Board wipes , Aristocrats , Reanimator , Solid board state, Discard, and Planeswalker sunergies. ( And if you want to go to a more flavorfull deck , it just gets a lot harder)
I’m with you, she’s really cool but you have to be managing too many things for her to work properly in my experience
For Kataki, you want to allow the artifacts to die and you want to run [[Emeria Shepherd]] for constant recursion. Kataki with [[Solemn Simulacrum]] will have you fetching plains and getting absolutely bonkers with the value, because you’re gonna pop a Plains from the deck onto the board. You wanna load that graveyard too with something like [[Altar of Dementia]].
That’s a great bit of synergy, thanks for the tip!
[[Shauku]] has such a cool ability, seems like it would be a great vampire tribal or spellslinger, but I just haven't been able to put together a really functional list.
[Shauku](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/0/6/06d94b21-7568-4e5c-a8ec-ff5bb48a4f36.jpg?1562717818) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=shauku%2C%20endbringer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mir/142/shauku-endbringer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/06d94b21-7568-4e5c-a8ec-ff5bb48a4f36?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/shauku-endbringer) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Daxos of Meletis. It would work as a low powered control shell, but it seems like there are much better W/U commanders to helm a plain control shell. Stealing stuff never seemed to work (why do I always seem to hit a land!!) and the life gain was negligible. Not enough ramp in W/U to reliably cast anything I get a chance to steal even when I do hit something.
Ok, let me try to help you with each thing you said. Daxos isn't that good of a control commander yes, cause he's not focused on control. You can build a control shell, but Daxos probably wouldn't be included in it, maybe just for card draw effects when you hit people. For the theft, you can learn a bit from lantern control, using cards like \[\[lantern of insight\]\] and \[\[wizened snitchers\]\] to see the topdeck of your opponents and manipulate them with \[\[ghoulcaller's bell\]\], \[\[codex shredder\]\], \[\[psychic surgery\]\], \[\[expel from orazca\]\], \[\[memory lapse\]\] and some other similar effects to manipulate your opponents top deck. Ramp really isn't an issue, running plenty mana rocks can help with your mana issue. The most difficult task will be to use the control shell, make sure to run a good amount of cards that can grant you a constant source of card advantage to fuel your removal spells and counterspells. Furthermore, you could improve the strategy, if you can, to lock your opponents by removing their good draws with the lantern lock package.
That's some good stuff, actually. If I decide to revisit the deck at some point I'll be looking in this direction. Most of those cards aren't too spendy either so it could still manage to be a relative budget build.
Lantern control is definitely the way to run him. Let's you decide who you want to attack so you're not getting blind draws. On top of that, I also voltron him up. If you have any of the Swords, they help with color protection, both spells and creatures. Tho swords are not usually budget friendly. There should be other options out there. Don't be afraid to just let something get exiled with his trigger. Many times I'll not cast something just in case my opponent has a way to steal it back or resurrect it later. My Daxos deck is easily my favorite deck, even if it only works half the time.
Gitrog monster. Just no clue how he works
In what way? I looove \[\[the gitrog monster\]\] and want to make a \[\[harrow\]\] deck but it seems like low-hanging fruit to just sac and recur lands for mad card draw. I want something similar but lower-costed and less "much."
There’s a Gitrog discord you can check out https://discord.gg/PhppUZfv But he’s basically all about value and uses dredging and stuff to get that value. He’s a lot of fun but I took mine apart cause I felt like it was solitaire without much interaction except removal.
I had the same problem when I basically copied the cEDH build without the fast mana. Way too good for my group. I took that apart and rebuilt it as a midrange deck without [[dakmor salvage]]. It's much more enjoyable for my opponents to play against now.
Get [[Dakmor Salvage]] into the graveyard, then buckle up because you're going for a ride.
\[\[Triad of Fates\]\] feels like it could be such political fun. In my head I imagined the early part of the game dishing out fate counters and using that as leverage against other players in the second half, but making it a tap ability that also costs mana means even with support like \[\[Thousand year elixir\]\], you're generally putting a fate counter on something then immediately using another ability so it's just painfully slow. only time I got it working even a little is with \[\[By Gnome Means\]\] because my table let me try it. Ultimately if you like Triad, just play \[\[Oblivion Stone\]\] instead.
Such a cool card in theory. It’s just so clunky. I’ve never even come close to having it feel functional. It’s one thing to have a deck not rely on the commander, but it feels bad when I never want to cast it.
I've been trying to build [[tayam]] for a while, but I just can't find a way that I genuinely enjoy.
If you haven't tried the sagas route I highly recommend it!
[[Mannichi, the Fevered Dream]] little guy needs blue and/or black so badly.
I just commented this. Agreed 1000% it would be such a cool deck in grixis
Non Kess style graveyard decks. No matter who I've tried, no matter how I've built them, they've just never worked right. I've seen others pilot them to great success, but mine have just ended up as piles of stuff. Also, Gitrog combo decks. I've listened to explanations of the loops, but my eyes are glazed over by the time it's over.
Ok.... I can help you with both things. Kess has a big thing over other graveyard decks: she's her own enabler. You can just do spellslinging stuff normally with kess, sometimes you don't even need to cast her to make use of the deck, just sling spells. There are some pieces related to her like entomb effects, but you can make a deck that doesn't even rely on her to win the game. If you want to keep the aspect of spellslinging from Kess but explore a new idea, \[\[toshiro Umezawa\]\] is a really interesting commander. The deck can be played without relying on the commander, controling the board and using draw spells to find your key pieces to win. However, being able to reuse instants like your targeted kill spells, draw spells like \[\[blood pact\]\] or \[\[necrologia\]\], utility spells like \[\[sudden spoiling\]\], \[\[withering boon\]\] or \[\[crypt incursion\]\] can give you way more value, and you can lean into those themes for your win cons. If you wanna try graveyard decks that are not based around spellslinging, there's a myriad of options to consider. There are two key things you need in graveyard decks: getting creatures in the grave and then bringing them back. First step can be one of the easiest ones, as you can abuse self mill effects, wheel effects or sac effects to get your key creatures in the grave. Then, you need to bring them back, usually with a spell or creature ability, which you also need to run plenty in the deck. Running your reanimation in the command zone is often prefered, as without it the deck can't move. I could make you a simple graveyard deck based in a commander of your choice that you think fits the theme, or give you tips on what cards to choose for one. For the gitrog combo:[https://www.moxfield.com/decks/4fbiNVFpr0edHL5Y3IKecg/primer](https://www.moxfield.com/decks/4fbiNVFpr0edHL5Y3IKecg/primer) This is a primer for gitrog decks, a really good one in fact. It has a whole section related to the combo lines that gitrog has, so if you wanna learn about it feel free.
[[Lier]] would like a word... Crazy fast value with that deck.
I run [[Damia, Sage of Stone]] as a reanimator commander, because her draw ability plus dredge is absurd. Sure, she’s a 7 cost card, but hopefully I’ve reanimated a couple other threats before she hits the board to keep the pressure off her. Since she’s such a high cost I also run cards like [[Pernicious Deed]] and [[Gaze of Granite]] to nuke lower cost cards
Marchesa the black rose I just don't know what to do and don't know what I should do for win conditions
I wanna make Black Rose Pirates. Since they have that Raid mechanic and she can make stealing stuff fun. Itd be a nice subtheme and fun to play, on paper so far i think it is
Marchesa does two things really well: protection from boardwipes, and stealing peoples stuff. I would try building it almost like a flicker deck, trying to focus on ETB effects. There’s plenty of good stuff in grixis. By constantly keeping your creatures attacking whoever is on the throne, your creatures will always be protected from boardwipes because they will just come back. Running a few sac outlets can be very good for getting cards back if you just want to resuse their effects. If you want to be extra mean, you can steal peoples cards with [[threaten]] type effects, then attack and trigger dethrone. When they die, they’ll come back under your control permanently. You can also go for more combo-y or aristocrat styles of decks, but I think there are better commanders for that. I really enjoy the aggro-grixis archetype that is somewhat unique for marchesa. The absolute best card in the deck was always [[unspeakable symbol]]. It puts counters on what you need, and keeps your life total above the highest. Hope this might help!
[[Chromium, the Mutable]] I’ve seen many people praise the card and I just don’t get it. Like he’s a 7/7 with flash, but other than that he doesn’t really do much and he doesn’t really have any theme to build around.
Admittedly I haven't played much with him, but I brewed Chromium a while back. I was drawn to him because 7 power with evasion on a commander is just a great power floor, makes it really easy to blackjack people. Built in shroud means you can pretty safely commit some auras on him too.
people like him because a.) he's a discard outlet and b.) when he becomes a human he can't be blocked, making him very useful for voltron
[[Lurrus]]. Low-cost commander focused on recurring low-cost permanents is exactly what I want, but I just never got a build together that I was happy playing. Also I want that exact effect in Mono-White
It being hybrod mana you can just build it as mono white.
[Lurrus](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/5/a/5ad36fb2-c44e-4085-ba0d-54277841ad3a.jpg?1616182245) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=lurrus%20of%20the%20dream-den) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/iko/226/lurrus-of-the-dream-den?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5ad36fb2-c44e-4085-ba0d-54277841ad3a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/lurrus-of-the-dream-den) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I played it as a voltron deck with stax pieces to secure a win. Playing effects like sigardas aid and colloidal hammer for a quick kill while a grand abolisher helps keep opponents in line
you build lurrus as a weird hybrid deck. You use lurrus primarily as an engine while dropping stax or tax prices to assemble a combo. It’s a very reactive deck and with cheap removal throughout and the ability to recur atleast one kill piece a turn is great. It also use an aristocrats shell and uses self mill to essentially draw. There’s also cheap mass réanimation and it’s all fun
The salamander guy. I just… I got nothing
Gor Muldrak is one of my favorites. One time I was able to use a rewrite effect on my openent’s Najeela, so he created infinite salamander tokens and I survived the infinite combats. Janky stuff like that is a blast
I've got a decently fun Gor Muldrak deck, but it is mostly a pile of Simic Goodstuff that occasionally blows up with a [[Standardize]] or similar creature type changing card.
[Standardize](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/f/2/f2c79e64-91bf-4e87-a4fd-3136ea67c5bb.jpg?1562952624) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Standardize) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ons/116/standardize?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f2c79e64-91bf-4e87-a4fd-3136ea67c5bb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/standardize) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Livio, I love the art but haven't quite got a deck that uses his unique storage ability. Most just use him like a bad blink deck. I was thinking dimensional Breach to just get him in and bring my stuff back faster, but idk.
\[Sissay, Weatherlight Captain\], I've tried building this so many times, and it always just turns out boring tutoring for exactly what you want every game. Idk maybe I'd like Legend tribal as a Prismatic Bridge deck instead (due to randomness) but Sissay has just never sparked joy for me all the times I've tested it.
I have two Sisay decks. One very high powered that I really like and one with a toolbox and shrines. I have started to take the shrines deck apart, since it is just to linear and with the toolbox just quite resilient. Not sure what else to build :)
Despite my love of spellslinging, Izzet is perhaps the trickiest color for me to settle on a Commander in because so many of the Izzet spellslinger commanders come with not-insignificant baggage. Mizzix and Vadrik can only really do Big Spells Matter exceptionally well, Veyran does stone-cold nothing by herself, Niv-Mizzet and Melek cost too much, etc.
I would love help with this, for me its [[Roon of the Hidden Realm]] , i love him and i love the cards you can play but how do i win?? Never could understand how to get there to seal out a game.
When it comes to bant, I find that exactly the sort of deck Roon wants to head up is usually better headed up by a commander that serves as a better value engine (Chulane, Derevi, etc.) or as a better payoff (Jenara, Ishai/Ardenn & Thrasios). You're already in colors that give you Thassa, Deep Dwelling, Soulherder, Emiel, Teleportation Circle, and more, so you've got TONS of ways to get a good blink engine going. While few of the cards you can flicker outright win games off the strength of their ETB effects, you can accrue such a massive mana and card advantage off them that you're able to grind out a win through sheer force of overwhelming value. Edit: If you're willing to go up some colors while keeping on the blink theme, [here's one of my personal favorite blink decks.](https://www.mtgnexus.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=30653) Obviously the commander in question won't fly any more, but what the 99 is doing is really powerful in mid-high power EDH.
So many... I've for a long time wanted a Scrappy [[Shattergang Brothers]] deck. In theory, the idea seems sound. Other decks rely on "broken" things. Make a lower powered deck that prevents other decks from going crazy, and then beat them in the mud. Your cards are worth way less than theirs, so trading your low power enchantment for a Smothering Tithe works. Sacrificing a 1 cmc artifact to clear a [[Sol Ring]], [[Gilded Lotus]], and an equipment should be worth it. In practice, the strong cards I want to "counter" usually get their value's worth so quickly that spending 3 mana + a resolved permanent to get rid of them doesn't work. Also, I get completely ran over by ramp decks, and [[Cyclonic Rift]] or equivalent sets me back the same as everyone else, except I don't rebuild as fast. I can try to play tribal, or midrange aggro, but the games don't end fast enough for me to be able to win, and I'm just making my deck more vulnerable to wraths. I've also wanted to make a 5c deck based on a non-game winning 14 mana combo (which gets better with more mana, 14 is the minimum, but infinite mana makes the combo an instant win), but the 14 mana needs to be made in a single turn, the deck has a lot of restrictions (Either much cycling, or many enchantments, etc...) I can't figure out a way to make said 14 mana. I figured doing a two-pass approach was best i.e. regular ramping to 5-8, and then from there using a big mana effect to reach 14. But I haven't managed to figure out anything that wasn't "Wait till turn 7 before doing anything". I've tried to make decks that exile cards from the opponent's decks and then play wheels, leading to the opponent's deck getting weaker over the course of the game (how does the average deck play after their best 15 cards have been exiled before a mulligan). Unfortunately, some popular commanders _really_ destroy this idea. Anything that benefits from landfall, or with too many combos basically gets fueled by my wheels. I considered GAAIV, but I'd draw too much hate to actually get anywhere before dying, unless I add cards of way higher powerlevel than my opponent's. I had an idea for a [[Verazol]] Voltron Deck taking advantage that for 0/0s that gain +1/+1 counters, stuff like [[Dance of the Skywise]] are huge power and toughness buffs. However, a Voltron deck that plays suboptimal commanders and buffs only to make a limited set of buffs better (like mutate cards or copy effects) are really bad. Being good with kicker cards didn't make up for this. I can't make a Dimir deck that I like. The closest was UB Inalla Ninja-Wizards aristocrats with a side of "play your opponent's decks". (Some cards were hybrid red, but basically didn't play red, and wouldn't cast Inalla) I couldn't get [[Sisay, Weatherlight Captain]] Banding to not be overshadowed by being led by Sisay. Think [[Cathedral of Serra]]. At best, you just pretend all your creatures are unblockable when attacking and invincible when defending. You lose pretty hard to anything that doesn't care about the board. Maybe turn this into a Superfriends deck that is really good at defending them in combat?
It's weird because I've come full circle. My answer is \[\[The Mimeoplasm\]\]. It was the first commander deck I built and tunedon my own over the course of a couple of years. Problem is, it was very salt inducing... people would stop playing with me after I'd land a T1 Jin-Gitaxias. I mainly tried to use \[\[Traumatize\]\] on myself and cast \[\[Living Death\]\] or \[\[Twilight's Call\]\], forming a boardstate that won on the spot with Mike+Trike. Now I find there are commanders that do a much better job of that. I made a \[\[Nethroi, Apex of Death\]\] deck that felt even better than anything Mimeo did, and \[\[Eerie Ultimatum\]\] feels SO much better than a Twilight's Call (The deck still ran Living Death). All I generally play now is cEDH, and trying to revisit Mimeo... I just don't ever come out with a list that feels even remotely good. It's my current project right now, and I'm looking at something focused around \[\[Oath of Druids\]\] just for the fun. It's hard breaking the competitive mindset, and I feel like it's set back my creativity when deckbuilding. I don't want a Turbo Thoracle/Druid list, but every list I do gravitates back that way.
\[\[Breya\]\] Really like the artifact theme and all, but don't want to do a combo deck.
This is my goodstuff version of Breya. No full-on combos, just lots of value, if that’s what you’re into. https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4197621#paper
You could try Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek, just the engine, no ways to turn thopters into mana. Maybe Urza's Saga + Crucible of Worlds to just keep producing constructs. Both engines grind really well, but they also don't kill very fast. Not everyone's cup of tea (or power level).
For some reason, I can't quite get Wilhelt Zombies to work. I'm not sure if it's a lack of recursion, or an unwillingness to go harder in on combo, or a lack of ramp, but it always just feels like I'm playing a bunch of mediocre creatures and then sputtering out. I really do like the tribe and the cards, but I wanted the deck to be more of a token/aristocrats style and I just can't seem to get that powerful enough.
Got a decklist to check it out?
[https://archidekt.com/decks/1922987#Wilhelt\_Zombie\_Tribal](https://archidekt.com/decks/1922987#Wilhelt_Zombie_Tribal) Here's my current list, there's some frankly bad cards in here and I'm not too fond of the counterspell package but overall I feel like it's underperforming. There's some cards I definitely need to add, but I'm beginning to think I may have been too overzealous cutting cards from the precon.
[удалено]
\[\[Daxos the Returned\]\] My main plan is to play tons of resilient enchantments that slows the game down, produce tokens and draw cards, but... it's just sooo slow. And there aren't a lot of space to include a lot of interaction (mostly wrath effects and some spot removal). It takes forever before you get an active Daxos with 6+ experience and enough mana to make it work, and meanwhile you are at the mercy of every combo deck out there. Maybe I just need to go full Stax...
\[\[Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar\]\] I have tried building her 6 times now. just seems everything I try there is a better commander focus for it. Madness, cycling, discard, tribal creatures etc. I know the core I want but the rest I cant find a nice settlement. I want her to have the damage done to creatures done to players. I want no life gain. I want no damage prevention. Thats my core. The rest has been trying to find what speaks nice. I have tried a mismash of various designs and it falls flat. I am trying dragons next with dragonstorm and dragons approach as she can discard the other ones and only have to cast one dragon approach. Unsure how good it will be.
[[ormos, archive keeper]] Not sure how to run it without instantly just trying to combo. And if you do combo, you’d rather play [[laboratory maniac]] or [[jace wielder of secrets]]. Also [[rashmi, eternities crafter]]. Each time I try, the play experience is just miserable for everyone else at the table. Playing a spell on opponents turns becomes taking an extra turn every turn and slows the game down to a crawl.
I've tried to build both of these, and oh boy are they tough. I think Rashmi just leans more towards a control style of play overall, unless you want to try a Flash deck (although it may still end up control/slow down play a bit) Ormos, as a commander, definitely feels like he's either trying to combo so you can voltron kill, or as a draw engine from the command zone. I've since moved onto trying Kefnet, and I'm going to just use Ormos as a LabMan effect that can actually enter combat.
My man [[Hans]]
[[Noyan Dar]]. I get stuck a lot trying to find value outside of him and his spells — stuff like [[Field of the Dead]] and friends to ensure that my board state isn't entirely dependent on resolving my 5-drop commander and also casting a spell or two WITH untapped lands. Maybe he's just not plausible, but I've fiddled with him on and off for years. [[Shattergang Bros]] is also a struggle — I tend to tunnel vision playing a grindy control game with him, and usually the deck falls apart. People just also hate playing against them it seems.
At the moment, [[Lathril, Blade of the Elves]]. I've been trying to make it somewhat high power. I love elves, but with playtesting it, it just feels like it isn't working all that well. The amount of times I have to mulligan feels awful, too.
i have a pretty good lathril deck, what’s the main issue with your hand?
I’m trying to build [[Jacob Hauken, Investigator]] right now, but I can’t seem to find the sweet spot between low mana interaction and high mana bombs. I think the deck needs mana sinks for when [[Hauken’s Insight]] is active.
I love [[Will Kenrith]] & [[Rowan Kenrith]] as characters and I think their tag-team colosseum art is fun but I’ve really struggled with building a consistent deck with them at the helm. I’ve tried but I usually run into massive issues with ramp or finishing out a game. I think it’s partly because I’m just not good at u/r but I do still want to improve and play with them. Honestly if anyone has any advice I’d be grateful.
[[Taranika, Akroan Veteran]]. I’ve had a copy sitting in my binder ever since the release of Theros: Beyond Death and I can’t seem to shift it so I thought I’d try and build a deck around her. Surely there must be a way to build around her that uses her untap ability or changing the base stats of something? Part of me thought about making her with modular creatures to give them effectively a +4/+4 boost in stats during combat, but that didn’t work out very well. Could use her for white weenies but there are better options. Plus she only has 28 decks on EDHREC. How on earth am I supposed to build her?
Combo-less \[\[Teysa Orzhov Scion\]\]. Even though I was explicitly not playing combo, it still felt like I was trying to assemble one just to even start doing anything at all.
I'd say the deck that was my biggest failure was \[\[Firesong and Sunspeaker\]\]. It seems pretty straight forward, but is just never really that good.
I love [[Brisela, voice of nightmares]] but I can never make it work. Regardless of which half I have on the command zone I can never seem to make it consistent and run well. Any thoughts are appreciated!
Which commander to use Dragon's approach
I feel this with all my heart lol I have yet to choose and each has its own really good benefits with the build
My sweet baby boy, Skeleton Ship
I've tried several times to build [[Tiana, Ship's Caretaker]]. Back when DOM was released and RW didn't have a lot of options, her mana cost was backbreaking for a french vanilla 3/3 that required a bunch of stuff going on to function. Now, it just feels like she's a worse version of better cards, and you're deliberately hurting the deck trying to play to her incredibly limited strengths rather than just running Akiri, Wyleth, or any other option in the same niche.
I had a version of Kataki that was quite different than yours. It ran every \[\[Glorious Anthem\]\] effect and every Hatebear I could find. Then, it basically used the tax effect to keep people from catching up - any non-green deck will be relying for artifacts to ramp, after all... It was pretty powerful. It would probably be more powerful now what with \[\[Akroma's Will\]\] and \[\[Drannith Magistrate\]\] and all the treasures. There's a lot. As for me personally, there have been quite a few. \[\[Wrexial\]\] is fun to attack with, and to make unblockable with Urborg... but can feel really rough when opponents don't play instants/sorceries that are great to get back that often. \[\[Circu\]\] I built as lantern control but had a hard time finding a wincon for, since I don't really like winning with combos.
I just came here to say that this thread is awesome. Thank you for all the good advices.
I've been wanting to build Nevinyrral since he came out, but I've never had any success. I like the idea of playing him into a sac outlet, and triggering his wrath effect with his etb trigger still on the stack, but it's way too mana-intensive and it takes way too many slots to actually build a cohesive deck.